Pepperoni Pizza Panko Chicken
Pepperoni Pizza Panko Chicken. Say that a few times really
fast! This is an easy, kid friendly recipe that screams
weeknight meal to me! It combines panko and parmesan crusted
chicken, pizza sauce,
Applegate Pepperoni, and melty
mozzarella cheese to make a delicious main dish.
Truth…I am not a huge pepperoni person, and never have been.
Growing up I was just an extra cheese kind of girl. I have
ventured out a bit since those days, but my ideal slice of
pizza is still extra cheese. Cheese = Life.
My children, on the other hand, love pepperoni. They have been
known to completely abandon a slice of pizza after eating just
the pepperoni off of the top.
WHO. DOES. THAT.
Despite not being a super duper pepperoni lover, I saw this
Applegate Naturals pepperoni at the grocery store and thought
it looked brilliant. It was huge. It was massive. It deserved
to sit atop a chicken breast with melty mozzerella cheese and
fresh basil on top. I needed this pepperoni in my life to show
my children that I, in fact, can be a pepperoni person too.
Here is my husband pretending to be tall, dark, handsome, and
mysterious while showing off this wonderful Applegate Naturals
Pepperoni! He attempted to give me several pointers on how to
get this shot. I didn’t listen to any of them!
Ingredients and Tips
I have been mentioning this a lot here lately, and here I go
again. Target is really killing it with their organic, nonGMO, and better ingredient oriented grocery selection lately!
I am so impressed with their organic selection, sometimes I
forget I’m even at Target. As I browsed the isles, or ran
through them with a screaming baby, I picked up a jar of their
Simply Balanced organic pizza sauce for $1.29!
$1.29!!!! I thought it was a steal.
I also used
Kikkoman panko bread crumbs, grated parmesan
cheese, shredded mozzarella cheese, and thin cut chicken
breasts. If your chicken breasts are thicker, I highly suggest
filleting them first (cutting them in half length-wise), and
pounding them thin with a meat tenderizer.
When I sauté chicken, temperature and enough olive oil is key
to getting those perfectly crisp panko crumbs on the outside.
I had my burner on a steady medium-low the whole time. I knew
I did not want to crank it up too high, as to not burn the
olive oil or the panko bread crumbs. I think the crucial part
to getting perfectly crisp and browned breadcrumbs is 100% the
amount of oil in your pan. So before you put each piece of
chicken in your skillet, make sure there is a generous dash of
oil waiting for those breadcrumbs!
Buttery Garlic Parmesan Rolls
I believe the name of these delicious rolls speaks for
itself! These buttery, garlicky, parmesan cheesy, carb-o-
licious
rolls are perfect to eat with your next Italian
dinner or just by themselves, because yes, they are that good.
Slather on some extra butter, melt some provolone cheese on
top, or just eat them plain, you can’t go wrong…I promise!
The real reason I baked these delicious babies up is because
my son has a complex about his bread at school now. Yes, the
3rd grade pressure is really getting to him! I asked him if he
wanted a sandwich in his lunchbox and his first question was
“Well what bread are you using?” We pretty much only eat Food
for Life Ezekiel bread because it is the best store bought
bread I have found. I totally love the Ezekiel bread because
it is loaded with natural nutrients and tastes great. It
doesn’t include any ingredients that I can’t pronounce and it
doesn’t contain any preservatives. My son is more of a
processed, packaged bread lover (because I can’t shield him
from everything!) so I’ve resorted to making my own breads and
skipping the processed, unnecessary ingredients in store
bought white breads and rolls (I also add in whole wheat
flour).
Did you know that some brands of shelf stable breads can even
include hidden trans fats??? I KNOW! Ridiculous! The hidden
source will be labeled as mono-and-diglycerides, which can be
found in a ton of processed foods. I’ve seen it in everything
from dips, to ice creams, to most processed breads. I have
even seen it in grocery store “bakery” breads, also know as
“We are just pretending to bake this but in fact it came in
frozen and isn’t really the fresh product you thought you were
buying.” Those “bakery” breads can be super misleading because
they look homemade but if you take a gander at the ingredients
sometimes they are even worse then the pre-packaged stuff. I
have looked and looked for a grocery store that carried a
bread that doesn’t contain anything weird and I have only
found ONE option at Wegman’s, their organic sourdough bread.
I’ve noticed that it has been sold out every week so maybe
Wegman’s will take the hint and come out with more options!
That would be awesome!
With that being said, I wanted my son to be able to take
something he wasn’t embarrassed about and would actually eat
so here it is.
I settled for using mostly bread flour (King
Arthur’s brand) and stone ground whole wheat flour which
created a really nice end result. Bread flour has never failed
me to create the perfect roll, so I highly recommend using it
in this recipe. I baked the rolls in pie pans (10 per
pan) right next to each other because I like that pull apart
aspect I get from doing it like that, but you could certainly
separate them and bake them on a sheet tray or in a
rectangular pan.
*Recipe adapted
Foodnetwork.com
from
Almost
Famous
Breadsticks
by
Chicken, Bacon, and Broccoli
Pasta
One. More. Week. Just one more week of summer vacation left.
Have you seen the video of the mom singing “Bye, Bye, Bye” as
the bus leaves on the first day of school? Yeah, that’s me
right now. I’m ready to see that bus pull away (ok, we don’t
have busses but if we did….) and I’m ready to get back to the
“school year” schedule. Don’t get me wrong, I love my oldest
son dearly. It is just that I’m 36 weeks pregnant, FAT as
ever, out of energy, can’t bend over, and have exhausted all
of our summer plans. I never thought I would be ready for
summer to be over, but today when it hit me that next Tuesday
is the first day of school I was kind of excited! Maybe it is
because I really am just tired of adulting, or maybe it is
because I have been telling myself over and over again that at
the end of summer I will have a new baby. Which ever the case
I’m just not so sad to see summer go this year.
Speaking of adulting, I did a little bit of it today and
whipped up some brownies PLUS this delicious, cheesy, and
somewhat indulgent pasta. Who doesn’t love a pasta dish like
this one? Cheesy..check. Creamy..check. Bacony..check. Carb-olicious..check. Oh and then there is the broccoli that I threw
in there to convince myself I was being healthy..check.
This
dinner is a win-win in the ingredient department, but even
better is that it takes less than 30 minutes from start to
finish! With back to school schedules in full swing I know I
will be needing meals like this to get me through the week
(and keep my kids from complaining).
Recipe Tips:
I used thin sliced chicken breasts for this recipe, as I
always do. If you pick up regular chicken breasts at the
grocery store, you can easily slice them in half
lengthwise before slicing into strips, or use a meat
tenderizer to flatten them a bit before slicing into
strips. There is something really gross about biting
into a super thick and chunky piece of meat so I always
recommend thinner pieces.
I only cook the broccoli for a minute or two when I
first put it in because it will continue cooking. When
your broccoli brightens up in color you are good to add
the rest of your ingredients.
Additional salt and pepper to taste can make or break a
recipe. The cheese in this recipe is pretty salty, so
you probably won’t need to add too much additional
seasoning if you do.
When cooking your bacon you may notice some residue on
the bottom of your pot. THIS IS GOOD. When you stir in
your milk go ahead and scrape that residue off the
bottom of your pan for extra flavor.
As always when cooking I keep my burner at a medium
temperature. Often times I feel like people want to
crank up the heat but this can easily ruin a recipe. A
steady low-medium is where I do most of my cooking!
Creamy Italian Dressing
I’m slightly embarrassed to admit how much I’ve been using
this dressing since I made it last week. I’ve been putting it
on literally EVERYTHING. Gahhh! Sandwiches, pasta salads,
spinach salads… you name it! But it makes everything taste
that much better, I promise.
Truthfully, with summer approaching I was looking for a bomb
pasta salad dressing. I love keeping a big bowl of veggie
filled pasta salad in the refrigerator all summer long to have
something healthy to eat in a pinch. I kept coming back to how
much I really enjoyed the dressing at Olive Garden so I
started searching for a knock-off, then tweaked it to fit
ingredients that I liked (no vegetable oils, Italian seasoning
packets, etc.) What I found so crazy about some of the knockoffs is they were suggesting using an Italian Seasoning
Packet. Doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose of a homemade
dressing? When I checked out the ingredients in Hidden
Valley’s “Farmhouse Original Homestyle Italian” packet guess
what the FIRST ingredient was? SUGAR! Am I the only one who
thinks something just doesn’t add up about that?
Making your own seasoning is super easy and only requires
about 2 minutes. Who knew, seriously!?! A few teaspoons of
this and that, whiz it together, and you’re done. Simple,
easy, and delicious! Not only is this dressing delicious as
soon as you make it, it actually gets better and better the
longer it sits. 2-3 days later the taste will change ever so
slightly each day to give you a robust and classic Italian
Dressing taste that you can use in a number of ways (believe
me, more recipes to come using this dressing). I also noticed
each day the amount of spice from the red pepper flakes died
down, so if you aren’t a fan of a touch of spice I would
suggest making this a few days in advance to let it chill out
before using it.
Just a note… this dressing does include 3 Tablespoons of mayo,
which is kind of an issue because most store bought mayo
contains a bunch of nasty, unnecessary ingredients. For a
really long time I avoided mayo all together because I’ve
*heard* making your own is kind annoying and the results
aren’t exactly great. I was never a mayo fanatic, but in a
recipe like this it is kind of crucial. Fortunately I found
an organic brand that doesn’t contain anything weird (no
preservatives at all), and uses expeller pressed soybean oil.
Being that I don’t use mayo that often, I’ll take it! If you
are looking for a store bought mayo I would suggest looking
for one that doesn’t contain anything you can’t pronounce, and
uses and expeller-pressed oils, which aren’t as highly refined
as their counterparts. I just recently found this product
(Wegman’s Brand Organic Mayonnaise) and it was the first store
bought mayo I have found that I was comfortable with buying.
With that being said, Thank You Wegman’s for making all my
mayo dreams come true!